Stop the Anti-Semitism When Talking Gaza

2014/08/11 Leave a comment

Commentary by Dean Obeidallah, a Palestinian American, on the need to avoid antisemitism when criticizing Israel on Gaza:

But to those who want to cheer “Death to the Jews,” use Nazi imagery, or in any other way want to demonize the Jewish people, let me be clear: I don’t want you on our side. Your hateful rhetoric is not only morally repugnant, it’s hurting my family and the millions of other Palestinians struggling for basic human rights. Don’t attend events supporting Palestinians or post vile comments in our name on Facebook, etc. We don’t want the Palestinian cause to be defined by your hate.

Let’s follow the lead of people like [US Congressman] Ellison—and those in Europe engaged in the “Raise Your Voice” campaign—and vocally counter anti-Semitism wherever we see it, be it at an event or a posting on social media. We can’t afford to wait to speak out until we see anti-Semitic incidents in the United States like those happening in Europe.

Hate is hate regardless of the target. Let’s not lose our own humanity while trying to fight for the humanity of others.

Stop the Anti-Semitism When Talking Gaza – The Daily Beast.

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The Difficult Work Of Measuring Anti-Semitism In Europe | FiveThirtyEight

2014/08/11 Leave a comment

Good piece on the challenges of collecting hard reliable data, in the absence of police-reported hate crimes (which both UK and Canada do), particularly with respect to social media:

Social media is one factor that complicates comparisons over time. One in 6 of the incidents this year through June were abusive comments on social media, a forum that scarcely existed a decade ago.

Rich said CST [UK’s Jewish Community Security Trust] sets a high bar for counting an anti-Semitic post on social media: It must have been reported to the group, and must originate from or be directed to someone in the U.K. “We’ve had to think quite a lot about how to develop processes for dealing with this,” Rich said. “Potentially the number of anti-Semitic tweets and Facebook comments could completely overwhelm our incident reports and make them completely meaningless.”

Groups like CST help supplement government statistics on hate crimes, which are inconsistently kept in the European Union. Only five of the 28 EU countries, including the U.K., have comprehensive data on racist crimes and hate crimes against Jews, Muslims and Roma people, according to a December analysis by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, or FRA.

“FRA has reiterated the necessity for EU member states to improve their data-collection methods,” Katya Andrusz, a spokeswoman for FRA, said in an email. “The agency has also called for member states to take measures to increase trust in the police and other authorities, as the two big challenges in gauging the extent of anti-Semitism are underrecording and underreporting, i.e. even when countries have the mechanisms in place to note the number of anti-Semitic incidents taking place, most victims don’t report them.”

Many of the articles about the rise in anti-Semitism cited a 2012 online survey of Jews in eight EU countries, conducted by FRA, finding that 2 in 3 respondents said anti-Semitism is a problem in their country. The survey, though, was the first of its kind, so it can’t say whether European Jews were reporting more anti-Semitism in 2012 than they had before. FRA is considering conducting another survey in several years. “There are preliminary plans to do another one, precisely for the reason you say” — i.e. that there is no trend data, Andrusz said. She added, “It’s impossible to say whether anti-Semitism is statistically on the rise in the EU, as the data simply doesn’t exist.”

The Difficult Work Of Measuring Anti-Semitism In Europe | FiveThirtyEight.

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Mirror Images: Antisemitism and Islamophobia – New Canadian Media – NCM

2014/08/09 Leave a comment

My take on the similarities and differences between antisemitism and islamophobia:

And for those protesting or supporting Israel, a do’s and don’t guide see How to Support Israel without Being Racist and How to Criticize Israel without Being Antisemitic for additional thoughts:

1.       Protest against the political entity Israel, Hamas, not the religion or ethnicity Jews, Muslims, Arabs.

2.       Never protest outside a mosque or synagogue. Find a neutral place e.g., federal or provincial parliaments, City halls.

3.       Avoid any use of Nazi imagery and language no ‘death to the Israelis, no death to the Jews,’no death to the Arabs, no death to the Muslims’ language.

4.       No violence or threats of violence.

5.       Hard as it may, try to understand where the other side is coming from. Not necessarily to accept, but to understand.

Mirror Images: Antisemitism and Islamophobia – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict – NYTimes.com

2014/08/05 Leave a comment

Good overview of some of nastier aspects of antisemitism emerging in Europe from the NY Times:

Carola Melchert-Arlt, an elementary school principal in Berlin and mother of three, said she felt afraid for the first time in her decades of living in Germany. She said her mother had asked her to stop wearing a Star of David, a family heirloom from her grandmother’s bat mitzvah, around her neck.

Friends have taken down their mezuzas, Ms. Melchert-Arlt said, and she no longer stifles a smile when a fellow Jew wonders if they are really welcome in Germany.

“We have all always felt the latent anti-Semitism here,” Ms. Melchert-Arlt said. “But what we have experienced in recent weeks and days, not only in Germany but across Europe, is a prevailing mood of outward anti-Jewish sentiment in the streets.”

Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict – NYTimes.com.

And the Globe’s similar take by Eric Reguly:

The intense media coverage of the war, much of it sympathetic to the Palestinians, has added fuel to the anti-Semitic fire, Jewish and Muslim group say. And what the mainstream European media shows is positively sanitized compared to what can be found on social media such as Twitter, where pictures of dead, dying and mutilated Palestinian children are common.

“The thing about social media is that it cannot be reined in,” says Salman Farsi, communications officer for the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre. “Everyone pushes out their propaganda and it’s quite scary. Left unchecked, it will generate more hatred and possibly violence.”

Mark Gardner, director of communications for Britain’s Community Service Trust, has a similar view. “I think of a lot of the anti-Semitic reaction comes from the media,” he said. “It causes enraged people to become more enraged. It can come from the mainstream media or, increasingly, from self-selected media like the social media sites.

”For years, CST has carefully monitored anti-Semitic “incidents” in Britain and claims it is ultra careful to distinguish between ant-Semitic and anti-Israel behaviour. Mr. Gardner says the number of anti-Semitic incidents always spike up when the Israel-Gaza conflict, ongoing since 2006 erupts into extreme violence Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

The peak monthly number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in Britain by the CST was 289, in January, 2009, during Operation Cast Lead. That’s when the Israelis, determined to stop the rocket launches from Gaza and the delivery of arms into Gaza through what Israel described as “terror tunnels”, launched a bombardment and ground invasion of the strip. Between 1,200 and 1,400 Palestinians were killed, and 13 Israelis.

The second highest figure came this month as the Israel-Gaza war grew bloodier by the day. Between July 1 and July 29, 130 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded.

Is the Gaza conflict stoking anti-Semitism in Europe? – The Globe and Mail.

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How to Support Israel Without Being Racist/How to Criticize Israel Without Being Antisemitic

2014/07/28 2 Comments

A practical guide to either supporting or opposing Israel in relation to Gaza and Palestinian issues, starting with supporters of Israel:

  1. Do go ahead and criticize Hamas.
  2. Don’t use racist or Islamophobic stereotypes or tropes.
  3. Don’t conflate Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims as if they were interchangeable terms or groups.
  4. Don’t dehumanize Palestinians.
  5. Don’t erase their existence, history, or culture.
  6. Do engage Palestinians and their allies in conversation on the issues of Israel and of racism, rather than simply shutting them down for disagreeing.
  7. Do try to be sensitive to the fact that Palestinians are largely powerless, poverty-stricken, and violently oppressed, and that any “war” or negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians can in no possible way be construed as a meeting of equals.

For for Palestinian supporters:

  1. Do go ahead and criticize Israel.
  2. Don’t use anti-Semitic stereotypes or tropes.
  3. Don’t use overly expansive language that covers Jews as a whole and not just Israel.
  4. Don’t use lies to boost your claims.
  5. Do engage Jews in conversation on the issues of Israel and of anti-Semitism, rather than simply shutting them down for disagreeing.
  6. Do try to be sensitive to the fact that, fair or not, many people take verbal or violent revenge for the actions of Israelis on Diasporan Jews, and Diasporan Jews are understandably frightened and upset by this.

To these lists I would add:

  • protest outside Embassies and Consulates, not synagogues or mosques;
  • non-violent only.

Any other suggestions?

This Is Not Jewish How to Support Israel Without Being Racist.

This Is Not Jewish (How to Criticize Israel Without Being Anti-Semitic)

 

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Anti-Semitism in Britain: My swastika | The Economist

2014/06/27 Leave a comment

On antisemitism in London:

Within Britain, the data on anti-Semitic attacks also turn out to be quietly encouraging, albeit with the proviso that much hate crime goes unreported. The Community Security Trust CST, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, counted fewer of them in 2013 than in any year since 2005. The CST notes that spikes in aggressive anti-Semitism here tend to be triggered by external events such as war in the Middle East. Compared with the Jews of France and Belgium, who have suffered fatal shootings in the recent past—and compared with other minorities in Britain itself—British Jews seem to have little reason to fear.

So the evidence suggests that modern Britain is indeed an almost uniquely benign place for Jews lapsed or otherwise to live. My swastika was upsetting, but it was also unusual. All the same, there is something residually demoralising about it, and in these relative judgments. They imply that some degree of anti-Semitism is inevitable—as, apparently, it is. Even in this enlightened age, and the most cosmopolitan city in the world, this primitive, irrational, amazingly tenacious prejudice is still with us, written into our culture and occasionally on our walls.

Anti-Semitism in Britain: My swastika | The Economist.

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BBC News – France National Front rift widens in anti-Semitism row

2014/06/18 Leave a comment

Couldn’t happen to a nicer family:

Mr Le Pen said there had been “no courtesy” in the handling of the affair in comments to French media on Tuesday.

“I can take direct hits to the face but not cowardly ones in the back,” he said.

He told French magazine Inrocks he had been “stabbed in the back” and told French radio station RTL that no-one could withhold his freedom of expression.

“I have no intention of changing my attitude,” he said.

He has previously argued that he did not know Bruel was Jewish.

BBC News – France National Front rift widens in anti-Semitism row.

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Holocaust Museum Urges Ukraine To Examine Its History of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

Good initiative by the US Holocaust Museum:

Aware of the country’s current turmoil, a delegation of museum officials visiting Kiev presented the proposal as an idea, not necessarily as an immediate priority to be implemented quickly. But according to museum director Sara Bloomfield, the initial response from Ukrainian officials was positive.

“In this country — you can’t really separate communism, Nazism and anti-Semitism,” Bloomfield said in a June 8 phone interview from Kiev. She noted that discussing anti-Semitism and teaching about it in Ukraine should span from the early twentieth century, including the infamous 1913 blood libel trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis through the Stalinist persecution of Jews and the collaboration of some Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis during the Third Reich’s occupation of the country.

Bloomfield visited Ukraine during the first week of June to meet with representatives of the newly-elected government and with scholars and members of the Jewish community. Her talks focused on practical issues, including gaining full access to Communist-era archives. But Bloomfield also sought to begin a process of dialogue aimed at getting Ukraine to reckon with its own history.

“Ukraine is in dire need of a new, more honest and complex historical narrative that reflects all the difficult issues of its history, including its darkest chapters,” wrote Bloomfield and her colleague, Vadim Altskan, a project manager in the museum’s international archival program, in a Global Post op-ed published before their trip to Ukraine. “It will not be easy, but Ukraine has a unique opportunity to validate the importance of an honest reckoning with history, recognizing that only a democratic nation can guarantee the security, freedom and prosperity of all its citizens.”

Following her meetings in Kiev, Bloomfield was cautious despite the positive response from Ukrainian officials to her idea of establishing a commission. “The reality is that right now, the country has many very urgent issues to deal with,” she said.

Ukrainian Jewish Encounter | Facebook is a Canadian initiative that has similar aims, given that there have been tensions both in Ukraine over its history as well as in the Canadian diasporas over World War II war crimes and most recently, over the relative weight and depictions between the Holocaust and the Holodomor.

Holocaust Museum Urges Ukraine To Examine Its History of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com.

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Mid-East: The knowledge constituency versus the ignorance lobby

2014/06/14 1 Comment

Good piece by Hussein Ibish on the resignation of Prof. Dajani over his leading a visit to Auschwitz:

Even if none of that’s true, knowledge is, nonetheless, power. The constituency for keeping Palestinian students ignorant of certain facts, presumably because they present the truth about Jewish suffering in Europe during the 20th century and that this complicates the understanding of Jewish Israelis simply as oppressors in the occupied Palestinian territories, is a perfect example of the “stupidity lobby.”

And it’s not just restricted to Palestinians and their relationship to Jewish history and the Holocaust. There is a broader conflict throughout Arab culture between those who want to embrace the world, in all its complexity and challenges, versus those who want to crawl inside a warm cocoon of insularity. Relying on nostalgic fantasies about former periods of greatness, the broad Arab ignorance constituency is very powerful.

It includes not only Islamists and other religious dogmatists, including apolitical clerics, but also strident nationalists, leftists, fascists, and chauvinists of every possible variety. Among all of these groupings, as well as the important open-minded and globally-conscious constituencies that are most in favor of engaging the world, there are people who push back against insularity. But for the past century at least, the majority trend in the Arab world has been to try, insofar as possible, to shut out knowledge of and engagement with outsiders, except for commercial purposes.

Many Arabs seem to be suspicious of and hostile towards real knowledge of others as opposed to myths and stereotypes, of course, and even more engagement with them. Too many of us just don’t want to hear it. Those, like Prof. Dajani, who try to break through this curtain of insularity are frequently punished, or at least criticized, for their embrace of broader realities, some of which are uncomfortable and destabilize reassuring mythologies.

Prof. Dajani says he doesn’t regret the turn of events. Why should he? He’s done something noble and constructive, and he will continue to do so without the support of his former university, through many other venues such as his Wasatia movement. But he, and all those like him throughout the region who want to smash the shackles of decades of carefully cultivated ignorance and embrace history and reality in all its troublesome complexity, are pointing the way.

The whole Arab world is at a turning point. If it continues to allow the stupidity and ignorance lobby, in all its myriad forms, to insist on cultural insularity, chauvinism, and deafness to the outside world, it will remain utterly stuck and unable to successfully join and compete in a globalizing world. But if the intelligence and knowledge constituency, as embodied by Prof. Dajani and so many other important leading Arabs, succeed in turning their societies away from decades of enforced parochialism, they will be among the most important groups in building a better future for the Middle East.

The saga of Prof. Dajani, and the whole battle between the Arab ignorance versus knowledge constituencies, is far from over. My money is on the intelligence community ultimately defeating the stupidity brigade, but its going to be an uphill struggle.

The knowledge constituency versus the ignorance lobby.

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Panelists decry Muslim anti-semitism | The Canadian Jewish News

2014/06/11 Leave a comment

Panel discussion organized by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies’ (FSWC) at the inaugural Leadership Policy Conference on Anti-Semitism., with Raheel Raza, Tarek Fatah and Tahir Gora:

The three Muslim panelists spoke out vehemently against what they characterized as a pervasive anti-Semitism found in Canada and across the Muslim world and which, stoked by Islamic extremism, often forms the underpinning of anti-Israel rhetoric, Israeli Apartheid Week and the boycott, divestment and sanctions BDS movement.

Raza, who is also president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, a group working to “reclaim Islam” and oppose extremism and violence in the name of religion, said it’s important for the Jewish community to ask itself, “Who are our real friends?”

She warned against “seemingly innocuous” displays of anti-Semitism, such as those that she said sometimes emerge under the pretext of interfaith dialogue.

“Some aspects of anti-Semitism you see flat out, like Israeli Apartheid Week. But then there are those subtle forms that come under the umbrella of interfaith dialogue – the whole term interfaith dialogue has been hijacked by [extremist] Islamists.

”She said hatred of Jews is often embedded in early Islamic education, and that Jews cannot afford to “stand by silently anymore” regarding things like anti-Israel activities on university campuses.

“If anti-Jewish sentiment is taught early in mosques, then is there any wonder you have Israeli Apartheid Week and BDS campaigns in places of education?”

Having been involved in more than a few discussions on antisemitism, and having my own take (see Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic?), these sessions could be strengthened by a broader cross-section of  panelists, not just three who agree with each other.

Pardon the phrase, but it is preaching to the converted; the challenge is to engage with those with whom one disagrees with.

Suspect the organizers were less pleased with Tarek’s other remark:

Fatah also asserted that without a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state, Israel’s and the Jewish Diaspora’s problems won’t cease.

“Palestine has to be a state and Israel has to get out of the West Bank… there is no choice. And this is the Israeli consensus. It’s only in North America where Jewish organizations question the two-state solution… A lot of time in the Jewish Diaspora is being wasted on unnecessary arguments that have no outcomes.”

Panelists decry Muslim anti-semitism | The Canadian Jewish News.

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